If there's one bet you don't want to take, it's that the Earth, our famously round home, is actually shaped like some sort of hilly pancake. Not just because you'll lose, but, apparently, because you could end up getting threatened with a medieval medium-range ballistic weapon.
Louie Lanz and Jamie Mathew Sutherland were having dinner earlier this year in Queenstown, New Zealand, when the conversation turned (as it does with most flat-Earthers, to be honest) to the subject of whether the Earth is flat. Lanz at some point bet his friend $10,000 that the Earth is in fact shaped like a map despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Otago Daily Times reports.
His friend accepted the bet, and immediately demanded payment. So far, so funny. Someone made a joke bet that the Earth was flat and both parties laughed it off, except no that's not how things played out. This is when things started to escalate. According to reports made to the Queenstown District Court on Tuesday, Sutherland then began making threats over several encounters at a gas station, demanding payment of $10,000 for what Lanz had believed was a joke bet.
The pair bumped into each other again on February 14, and this time, Sutherland was not kidding around, Lanz told the court.
''If you don't pay it I'll get a crossbow. I'll shoot you and your father, put you in the trunk and they'll never see you again," Sutherland reportedly said at the gas station on Valentine's Day to Lanz, with whom he'd been friends since primary school.
Lanz told the court that in retrospect he didn't believe that Sutherland had any intention of following through on his medieval threat, but at the time was unsure and so told his father.
"When someone threatens to kill you with a crossbow it's quite concerning."
Lanz and his father asked for the case to not go any further in the courts, believing Sutherland had learned his lesson, and the charge was dismissed by the judge. Sutherland has apologized to Lanz, the Otago Daily Times reports, and has accepted he will not be receiving any payment for the $10,000 bet even though he won it, as the Earth is undeniably round.
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